Introduction
Blockchain technology, illustrated in Figure 2.1, is an algorithm and distributed data structure designed to manage electronic cash without any central administration. The original blockchain was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto to support Bitcoin, the first large-scale peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, completely free of government and institutions. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT). Most DLTs have emerged in Bitcoin’s wake.
The central problem in electronic cash is double spend. If electronic money is just data, nothing physically stops a currency holder trying to spend it twice. It was long thought that a digital reserve was needed to oversee and catch double spends, ...
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